


The Mental Health Pie Chart of James Buchanan Barnes

by WeShallSee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Enough to go back to sleep at least, Fluff, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallSee/pseuds/WeShallSee
Summary: "Can you tell me your name?” Steve tries to ask, treading right up to the line of what is acceptable to question this early in the morning and with little knowledge of who Bucky is right now. But then again, Steve’s hair is mussed up from Bucky’s fingers tangling up in it and his collarbones are dotted with light pink marks, so he doubts he looks threatening enough to warrant a bad reaction if the question is too far."It's all short, sweet, and sun-drunk.





	The Mental Health Pie Chart of James Buchanan Barnes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Miraculously, The Percentages Shift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890231) by [ChaoticWeevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticWeevil/pseuds/ChaoticWeevil). 



> steve's just Goin' With The Flow, you know, like how he literally never does.  
> this is literally just genderchanged back from the lesbian fanfic i always write

Bucky’s mental state, as a whole, is a messy, cracked pie chart. There’s one small slice of days where he wakes up and is _definitively_ the Winter Soldier, where he stalks the halls and keeps his boots laced up tight even in the house, ready to flee. One ever-expanding half where he wakes up and is nothing but himself and delights at uncovering new tidbits of memory and makes scrambled eggs for breakfast with a decadent amount of cheese. And there’s the remaining sliver where he wakes up in between, caught in a foggy mix of confusion. Steve reckons that if he was diligent enough, he could map the change in neatly patterned percentages, shrinking and growing.

But right now, with Bucky staring wide-eyed and muddled at him, Steve’s hyper-aware that the small, blurry portion of the graph is growing and feeding off of itself in the meantime. Bucky hasn’t pulled himself out of bed yet, but Steve can’t tell if that’s because he knows he’s safe or because he’s frozen himself too still to move as a defense mechanism.

“Can you tell me your name?” Steve tries to ask, treading right up to the line of what is acceptable to question this early in the morning and with little knowledge of who Bucky is right now. But then again, Steve’s hair is mussed up from Bucky’s fingers tangling up in it and his collarbones are dotted with light pink marks, so he doubts he looks threatening enough to warrant a bad reaction if the question is too far.

Bucky just deepens the furrow in his brow. He turns enough to examine the surrounding room. When he speaks, it’s with a garbled accent—Brooklyn mixed with rolling Soviet—but Steve doubts he’s aware enough to school his voice back into a trained generic-American tone. “Do I have a mission?”

Answering a question with a question. That was a good sign, at least. Not ‘what is my mission,’ not ‘ _you_ are my mission,’ but doubt. Steve wants to smooth that away, though, he wants to melt out the creases between Bucky’s eyebrows. But he has to go _slow_ if he wants to manage that this morning.

“No missions,” Steve says, keeping his voice steady, tone still low with sleep. “Nothing’s expected of you right now.” Usually, he’d want to explain the entire situation then and there, but Bucky taught him otherwise. Not to overwhelm him with information that Bucky’d have to deign as a lie or a truth, just to let him come to him own conclusions and ask his own questions.

“Ah.” Bucky raises his eyebrows a degree, flicking his gaze down to the way Steve’s holding the bedsheets up over his bare chest. “So my last mission was to seduce you.”

That earns a flustered laugh from Steve, at least. Bucky’s own conclusions always erred on the side of bluntness. “Wasn’t a mission. No one tells me enough to seduce info out of me.” Steve can’t be embarrassed, though; Bucky’s distracted enough with feeling over the socket where his prosthetic was usually attached. He’d told Steve how HYDRA kept it on him at all times, leaving him constantly a weapon. These days, Bucky spends days without a prosthetic of any sort. Enjoys the freedom to reject weaponry.

Bucky pulls himself out of bed, raking his fingers through his cropped hair and… Stopping, for one moment. He gently felt at his hair again. Cutting it had been Steve’s idea, the choice to start to grow it out again had been all Bucky. When he’d enlisted, Steve had cut his hair for him. Cooed over his handsome soldier, even as the jealousy of not being able to follow him into war stung under Steve’s skin.

And six months ago, Steve cut his fella’s hair again. It served as a marker for time, Bucky had explained. HYDRA didn’t bother cutting their Asset’s hair, so it being short proved that Buck was either in him army days or in the 21st century with Steve, and either of those meant some semblance of self. It growing out just enough that Bucky kept it in a stub of a ponytail most of the time? That meant he was in the 21st century alone, and undoubtedly _safe._

Right now, though, that promise of safety just seems to double Bucky’s confusion. He picks up Steve’s discarded shirt from the floor and tried to pull it on, makes a disgruntled noise when he realizes it doesn’t fit right, then hunts down his own.

Steve sits up in bed slowly, keeping to the bed to prove he’s not making a single move for a weapon, to restrain, to harm Bucky in any way. He pulls his knees up to his chest and slowly blinks himself awake, waiting for another question to arise.

After Bucky checks the door to the bedroom and realizes that it’s not just unlocked, but that the wood itself is flimsy enough to strike down should the need arise, he relaxes. And sure enough, another statement bubbles up. “You look familiar.”

Steve lights up, just a little. “I do?” he says. Just a gentle prompt, but even that’s enough for Bucky to scrunch his nose up, pressing the heels of him palms to his temples like he could press the memory out into the open.

“You were… Smaller. How did you--” A fragment of realization dawns over Bucky’s face and, miraculously, he laughs. Ruffles at his hair again, marvels in his prosthetic arm set on the dresser instead of fastened on his body with metal and grit. “I’m dreaming? Or this is… What decade is it? Aw, Steve, it’s you, isn’t it?”

Steve grins, offering a shake of his head as quick as he could. “Not dreaming. We’re in the 21st century. Twenty-teens, or whatever we’re supposed to call it.”

“Well, shit!” Bucky climbs back into bed, still distinctly confused, but happy to retreat back to the warmth of the bed sheets, keeping his eyes locked on Steve’s face like he was the 8th wonder of the modern world. “Look at you, doll. Look at all that color in your cheeks. That ain’t a fever, right?”

Steve grins up at the ceiling as Bucky pushes his hand to his forehead to check. He’d protest, usually, if only as some habit from the old days—Bucky’d never let him go to work if he found out Steve had gotten sick again. Steve was lucky, though. He got to keep all the doting and that relieved sag to Bucky’s shoulders when Steve was, as usual these days, healthy as an ox.

Bucky lets himself melt back onto the bed, head tucked against Steve’s hip, probably hiding away enough to process. Or at least, that’s what Steve thinks he’s doing, until he hears the soft sound of Bucky starting to snore. That’s the good thing about these confused shades of grays: Bucky usually falls asleep the second he gets enough of a handle on the situation at hand to calm himself. Steve, for his own part, can’t help but smile to himself as he too sinks to the mattress, dragging on one of their too-soft pillows down to support Bucky’s head.

Bucky’s mental state, as a whole, is messy. Steve can’t seem to make himself mind, no matter the situation, because it always ends like this: the two of them back together, tangled up among sheets. Whether it was in the 30s, after patching up Steve’s scraped hands from socking some jerk and getting punched back himself. Whether it was in the middle of the war, with Steve’s modified chorus girl getup folded next to Bucky’s boots and mud-streaked uniform. Or now. The Cold War in one bed. Two men deemed medical lost causes, miraculously alive, curled up against each other.

Not too shabby of an ending. Steve could practically _feel_ his own pie chart of doubt and fear and love changing it’s percentages by the moment.


End file.
